steph96 Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Yeah, because Clinton had NO part in all this. > > Plenty of blame for everyone… Clinton left office in 2000. I doubt much blame can be pointed his way. There was plenty of time to correct any supposed mistakes he may have made.
No. Clinton had no part in all this… It’s Bush being lack of fiscal discipline for 8 years and the congress pushing housing ownership to as many Americans as possible, no matter if they qualify or not. Wall Street was just trying to come up with financial products to facilitate these “American Dreams” and got themselve into troubles. It’s fair to say Wall Street screwed themselves up. But Bush/Paulson’s reactions did nothing but fueling the crisis, to a level that these lame ducks couldn’t handle anymore. No short-term fix since the Q3 earning will be horrible and the holiday sales will be gloomy… We are in for a good 6-12 months “U” bottom… globally.
Alphaseeker, I have my CFA Charter. All I am saying is that Paulson is doing the best he can…this is a hell of mess!! Althought he bailed out Bear, let go Lehman, IMHO and despite all the GS conspiracy theory out there, I believe Paulson took the most SUITABLE (not necessarily the best) actions based on the available information at the spilt second.
WS, so I’ve been debating w/ a fellow charter holder then. I got mine in 05… after 3 or 3. Enough on fleshing charters. Paulson is not the root of the problem and I also discount the GS consspiracy… What I fault Paulson on is that after bailing Bear out, Paulson was irked by the public perception that he/government will bail out failed firms. He wanted to change that image by doing nothing on Lehman… He miscalculated and let his emotion carried him away on this decision. That opened the global credit/trust demage floodgate. After seeing the havoc ex post LEH’s fall, Paulson paniced and asked the congress for the bailout plan. Had he saved LEH, there won’t be $800b bailout plan and things could very well be 180-degree different. That said, no mercy for Lehman, they screwed themselves up. But it’s Paulson who screwed the global capital markets…
To be fair, Paulson and Bernanke have been dealt a tough hand. My only complaint is that they always seem to be a few steps behind the market. Paulson has made some comment which makes me believe he significantly underestimated the extent of the current crisis. Now he not only has taken out his bazooka (a scenario he did not expect to happen), he is almost out of ammunition.
AlphaSeeker Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > No. Clinton had no part in all this… > > It’s Bush being lack of fiscal discipline for 8 > years and the congress pushing housing ownership > to as many Americans as possible, no matter if > they qualify or not. > > Wall Street was just trying to come up with > financial products to facilitate these “American > Dreams” and got themselve into troubles. > > It’s fair to say Wall Street screwed themselves > up. But Bush/Paulson’s reactions did nothing but > fueling the crisis, to a level that these lame > ducks couldn’t handle anymore. > > No short-term fix since the Q3 earning will be > horrible and the holiday sales will be gloomy… > > We are in for a good 6-12 months “U” bottom… > globally. First off Clinton DID have a hand in this. This whole mess can be traced back long before Bush entered into presidency. Second, you all give way too much credit to presidents for handling/preventing situations such as these. Not to say that don’t share some blame, but the whole system is guilty. I would bet that this would have blown up in all of our faces regardless of who went into the whitehouse. I don’t support bush, but I’m so sick of everyone giving the guy so much credit (positive or negative). Get at the real root of the problems/causes here. (Notice PLURAL)
YUP- I AGREE THERE IS PLENTY TO PASS AROUND. It would be great if someone w/ the time and resources could compile a montage clips of big spending reps/senators in 2000 vs now. Something like Representative X… 2000 “We NEED to give EVERYONE in America the chance to reach the American dream of home ownership. This is a land of blah, blah and wall street/gov’t need to support this. We need to keep rates low… we NEED our agencies to buy sub prime, etc. It would be GREEDY not to…” 2008 “The GREED in wall street has created this disaster and now main street is paying. Wall street is greedy… blah…blah. These loans should never have been made.” This is an opportunity to highlight just how little thought some, uhhh most, of our politicians put into these programs. As long as their constituents are happy in the short run vote for whatever no mater what the repercussions may be. It makes me sick seeing some of these ppl spout off like blubbering fools on CSPAN.
Alpahseeker…Paulson did what he had to do. There are simply too many variables in this globle mess. I can say that Bear’s failure was a surprise, Paulson “had to” bail them out; Lehman had some time (we can argue about the length of the time). His job was tough, trying to come up with a solution based on imperfect information. I am not saying he is doing a great job, only saying he is doing the best he can given the sh*t storm we are in. At least we have Paulson, who has experience on how to deal with the market. P.S I will be pretty pround of myself if I am in a postion that allows me to screw the world capital market…that is a big shot.